
8 



MEMORIAL 



HERMAN TEN EYCK FOSTER. 



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MEMORIAL 



HERMAN TEN EYCK FOSTER. 



PREPARED BY 

Hon. a, B. CONGER, 

Ex-President of the New Yo7'k State Agricultural Society. 
II 

PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING 

FEBRUARY 9, 1870, 

AND PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 








J 

ALBANY : 

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. 

1870. 



4 



NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY; 

Xn Ejcecutive Conimittee, Feb. lO, 1869. 



On motion of Mr. Wing: 

Whereas, This Committee has received this morning the puinful 
intelligence of the death of our beloved and respected associate, 
Herman Ten Eyck Foster, 

Resolved, That a committee be appointed to prepare a suitable Minute, 
in memorial of the worth and services of Mr. Foster, to be presented to 
the Executive Committee and the Society, and entered upon the records 



IVIEMORI^L, 



OF 



HERMAN TEN EYCK FOSTER. 



Our Society deplores the loss of one, who for 
many years honored its confidence in varied official 
service. The social circle in which he moved, 
mourns a most generous and dearly esteemed friend, 
and the benevolent world an ardent and successful 
fellow-laborer. 

Herman Ten Eyck Foster died on the ninth day 
of February, 1869. His death was a surprise, even 
to those who witnessed it; without preparation to 
all, save himself. 

An accident early on the morning of the 27th of 
January, which resulted in a fracture below the 
left knee, remanded him to his couch. The injury 
was not deemed serious; every symptom 23romised 
early convalescence. While his family were rejoic- 
ing in the indications of a complete restoration to 



useful and wonted labor, and as one of his children 
was reading from a recent publication, some 
witty thought produced a general merriment. His 
hearty laugh was quickly arrested by a sense 
of faintness. The reading ceased at his request, 
and his head was laid on the pillow. Consciousness 
was quite suspended, and as it returned he said to 
a daughter ministering to his relief, " I was almost 
gone. "^Instantly the blood surged over his riven 
heart; the cord which bound him in time was 
severed; and his spirit released from earth, ascended 
to its eternal abode. 

He was born in the city of New York, on the 
1st of March, 1822, the third son of Andrew 
Foster, a merchant of Scotch birth, and Anna Ten 
Eyck, an Albanian of Holland lineage. 

At the age of fifteen he entered Columbia Col- 
lege, and in due course received his degree as 
Bachelor of Arts. Spending a winter in the trial 
of mercantile life, his tastes, and perhaps also a 
regard to his health, prompted him to the study of 
farming, which he pursued for a year at Jackson- 
ville, Tompkins Co., under the supervision of Mr. 
Aaron K. Owen. 

His choice of a pursuit in life was soon and wisely 
determined, and Lakeland, an estate of nearly 250 



acres on the east shore of Seneca Lake, was pur- 
chased m June, 1843. 

Two summers had passed, and when the Lands- 
cape was clothed in the gorgeous tints of October, 
he brought to his house, to make it their home, 
Pauline, a daughter of Mr. Antoine Lentilhon, a 
French resident of New York City. Four and 
a half years passed, and a son and two daughters 
were born, the jewels which the mother Avore to the 
delight of the doting husband and loving father. 
Then suddenly she w\as called to a higher home, of 
which that on earth was, in the ministries and grace 
of love, the type. 

What was the weight of that affliction on his 
heart, it is not ours to reveal. We note only its 
traces in his life. The main current of his earthly 
affection, thus severed, was soon observed to join 
itself to its tributaries, and swelled his affection and 
care for his bereaved children. From the tutelao-e 
of grief he passed to an inward culture, which gave 
him hope in his patient waiting for a blessed re- 
union, took from death its accustomed horror, and led 
him to express a boding joy in the day of his release. 
Not that such expressions were frequent, but 
rather elicited at times of rarest confidence, or 
brought out in sympathy for some similar trial. 



8 

Only was it possible for the nicest observer, and 
that on few occasions, to read in the depths of his 
fixed eye, the traces of that deeply felt and long 
borne sorrow ; to understand how inwoven with his 
placid smile and almost gay urbanity, was that 
weird, yet staunch earnestness of feeling, which 
gave to his convictions of duty their true inspira- 
tion. 

His near neighbors best attest his love for the 
highest good of their families, as they point to the 
Sabbath School which he originated, and sustained 
for nearly nineteen years. His assistants in his 
work, and his scholars, will not soon forget his labor 
of love in the prayer meeting on the eve of prepara- 
tion, which, though recently established, evinced 
his intense yearning over their religious welfare. 
Nor will those who shared his nearer confidence 
fail to be animated by the example of fortitude, 
which kept him tied to his work even in periods of 
exhaustion, or of that enthusiasm which, in the 
deej) interest of his work, was oblivious of fatigue. 

The sentiments of respect manifested in the last 
tribute to his remains, the irrepressible emotion, 
the quiet utterances which spoke his loss and his 
worth, are the enduring evidence that his genial 
nature, expressing itself in words and works of kind- 



9 



ness and just regard for the welfare of all of human 
mould, had fully wrought out its mission, and that 
in his life's journey, he has left 

" Footprints in the sands of time, 

" Footprints that perhaps another, 
Saihng o'er life's solemn main, 
A forlorn and shipwrecked bi'other, 
Seeing shall take heart again." 

For such a spirit, farming was not simply a busi- 
ness or the occupation of time. It was communion 
with Nature in her marvelous work, not merely 
a matter of study or inquisitive search into her 
hidden mysteries ; it was a love for her display in 
the leafy garniture of her forests, in the heaving 
bosom of her lakes, in the rippling courses of her 
rivulets, in the rounding of her hill sides, in the 
craggy summits of her mountains, not less than in 
her verdant meadows, or her ripening grain. Hence 
his pursuit after her rewards in the labors of the 
field, or the handiwork of the garden, was ever 
fresh and joyous. It was less of a task than a j)as- 
time. Happiness and hope were, as they should be, 
its moving forces. The methods, however, were those 
which experience and science had approved, whether 
in the wise adjustment of means to ends, in the 
provident adaptation of every work to its season, 
2 



10 

or in the plans and purpose of a steady progress. 
The proof is in the result. Without any lavish 
expenditure ; without fretting out or vexing his 
noble nature on unforeseen contingencies or petty 
mishajDs; with every enjoyment of life, in the rear- 
ing of his children, in unbounded hospitality to 
his friends; with time freely sjDcnt in works of bene- 
volence, and not a little spared to his official duty 
in advancing the cause of Agriculture — his farm 
had, under his wise and happy management, more 
then trebled its original power of production and 
quadrupled its value. 

We note as commendatory evidence of his suc- 
cess in the management of Lakeland, that, as early 
as 1848, he received at the hands of our State and of 
his County Society, the first of the several prizes 
offered for farms systematically and profitably cul- 
tivated. 

To those who had not with him looked over his con- 
venient shelters for stock, produce and implements, 
the plan of his buildings as given in the Transac- 
tions of oar Society for that year, would be ample 
proof of his love of order, and skill in arrangement. 

But if any should seek for a higher test of his 
success as a farmer, the secret is disclosed in his 
untiring industry, in his working, where need was. 



11 

with his own hands, and ahvays where the labor 
was severe and ingenuity was required in its appli- 
cation, and in thus being the leader and instructor 
of his farm laborers. 

If we may be permitted to dwell on this phase 
of his character, we will add that he never did any- 
thing "by halves;" and in the fact that lie ever 
in his private and official as well as in his farming 
life, carried out to the end whatever he undertook, 
we find confirmation of the Avonderful simplicity and 
force of his mind. His directness and singleness of 
purpose were as manifest, as if he had based his life 
solely on the precept, (not more wisely on the 
oracles from which it was taken.) 

" To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the day the night. 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

Yes, so free was he from all that was covert in 
design, from all that savored of guile and suspicion, 
that it was hard for him to believe that these pests 
of our nature could lodge and fructify in human 
hearts, or to understand why they were not instantly 
eradicated by wholesome culture. 

When we approach Mr. Foster's official relations 
to our Society, words fail us. They are lost in the 
emotions which his removal, from our pleasant circle 
of unsought honor and proffered labor, excite afresh. 



12 

We have lost a companion in the work we render and 
the sacrifices we make, towards the elevation of 
Agriculture, to the rank of an accepted science and 
honorable profession. Many of us have parted with 
a very dear and intimate personal friend, with whom 
in the many problems of life we took sweet counsel. 
We prize the memorj' of his promptness, frank- 
ness and courtesy in counsel and action ; his readi- 
ness to redress or smooth a grievance, felt in reality 
or imagination, as sometimes happens in the con- 
tests for the awards and testimonials of our vSociety; 
above all, that sincere manifestation of interest in 
its welfare, that uniform devotion to its continued 
prosperity, that instinct of honour which spurned 
the most specious wrong and championed the feeblest 
right. 

We surrender to the members of the Society the 
task which they can best perform, the embalming of 
his memory in their hearts. Our work of tracing, in 
outline, this memorial of his life and character is 
submitted, in the consciousness that the life tints 
will be added by many loving hearts, and with no 
little misgiving that, as his merits have been poorly 
scanned, his j)lace will be tardily filled. 

In an age in which vast fortunes seem to be 
gained by the throw of a die ; when most of our 



13 

youth, spurning the trodden jDaths of labor, are seen 
danglmg after the car of Fortune ; when the farm 
is throAvn up and the old homestead forsaken, and 
its inmates covet village lots, and its young men 
leave the plough for the counter; when, under an 
unprecedented demand on the fruits of labor and 
the products of industry to support our credit as a 
government and people, production in agriculture 
is lessened and consumption in the luxuries as well 
as necessaries of life increased; who are they, 
born in cities, lapped from infancy in ease and 
affluence, who will cast behind them all clogs on 
noble inspiration, tear themselves from luxury and 
the blandishments of frivolity and folly, resolve to 
stem the tide which is hurrying our country to bank- 
ruptcy and ruin, and devoting their energies to an 
increased production from deserted or impoverished 
farms, gladly spend their lives in the study and in 
the workshop of Nature ? On whom of such shall 
fall the mantle of our departed friend ? 



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